Dawn
by miss selah
Summary: It’s the dawn of a new age, the age that they had ushered in. [Snape Lily]


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**Dawn**

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It was the turn of a new era, a holiday. A regular bloody independence day.

The wizarding world made no secrets about their celebrations, mingling with muggles in a sporadic, carefree athmosphere. Even the Minister was out having a good time, the rules that the Ministry had so painstakingly erected being forgotten for this one moment; this one, happy moment.

Fireworks sparkled outside of the dungeon windows and Severus flicked his hand, invoking the wandless magic he had always been so frightened to use for fear the Voldemort find out. It had been his ace in the hole. . . Severus smirked, the wrinkles on his face twisitng grotesquely in the foreign shape. He had no more need for his secrets or his plots or his cunning. There was no Voldemort.

He pulled back his robes and stared at his arm where the tattoo remained, still and menacing. Severus sneered down at it, as though he was trying to intimidate it right back.

"You aren't so tough now, are you?" he asked the mark as he took a long swig of firewhiskey, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat. "Not. . . so tough now."

The floo in the dungeon burned a merry shade of green and Dumbledore, whole and hale, who had survived Snape's attack on him by turning Snape _himself _in to his own horocrux, allowing Snape to effectively kill the body but not the soul, smiled at him, his glasses fogged and his eyes with enough twinkles in them that Severus wondered for a moment if the Headmaster had gone out and plucked the stars from the sky itself and put them in his eyes.

"The students are right; you_ are _a bit of a dungeon bat, aren't you?" He asked, a slight slur in his voice.

Severus acknowledge him only because he respected him and took another swig of firewhiskey.

The twinkling in the headmaster's eyes died down a bit. "You should be celebrating. It's the dawn of a new era, and you helped to usher it in."

His only response was to lean back in his chair and finish off the bottle. He looked longingly, appreciatingly, at the label before putting the empty bottle down on his cold, hard desk. "What makes you think that I'm not celebrating?" He asked, and summoned a house elf. "Another." He said, gesturing to the empty bottle.

"Severus. . ." Albus crooned, "be reasonable. Join in the festivities."

The house elf made quick work of getting him another bottle and Severus let out an appreciative whistle. "1874." He mumbled, "Good year." _Old _year. Old like he was old.

"Severus. . ." his tone was more than a little pleading and Severus gave him a level glance.

"With all due respect, headmaster, why don't you just shod off then, alright?" he asked as he opened the bottle with a loud crack.

Albus looked for a moment as though he was going to protest again, but then he shook his head. "Very well, Severus. Celebrate in your own way." He took a step back through the floo, muttering his location in hushed tones that Severus couldn't hear over the crackling of fireworks.

His own way, eh?

Severus allowed one window to open and he tilted back in his chair and watched the fireworks and stars in his dark, damp class room, the evidence of children all around him. Papers that they had left, the smell of sweat and sulfur, a piece of everlasting gum stuck to the stones in a place or two.

He was in no mood to worry over students though.

He was in no mood to worry over anything at all.

So many had died. . . so many _he _had killed, in his rage. Deatheaters, wizards, children who thought that they were chosing the winning side and, regardless of whether or not they liked their actions, they wanted to _live, _so they were willing to take the deatheater's stand.

Fools, they deserved to die.

While everyone else was celebrating, though, he was mourning; mourning properly, he supposed, for the first time.

Reaching blinded in to his desk, Severus shuffled around until a flash from the fireworks illuminated it enough for him to find what he was after. Holding it up, Severus waited for another crack of light to reveal her face.

She was smiling, elbowing him in the ribs, trying to get him to smile too. It wasn't that he didn't like standing so close to her, it was that he was so uncomfortable with the way James kept staring at them. . . like he knew something they didn't.

He probably did.

Lily. . . she hadn't deserved to die. She had been so good, so very, very good. She had never done anything worse than laying down with that Potter fellow and baring him a son, and she had died because _he _had gone in to a jealous rage when he had realized that he had _lost _her, lost Lily, his precious, pretty, Lily, and there was nothing left that he could do to win her back.

Still, for a moment, at least for that moment, they had been happy. Him in his own awkward, confused way, and her with her bubbly smiles and quick scowls.

He lifted his glass. "Here's to you, Lily Potter." It tasted sour on his tongue, and he washed it down with the rest of the bottle.

It was the dawn of a new age, and they had ushered it in. Even if she wasn't there, she had been the cause of it. It had always been her.

Severus bit back the burning whiskey with a scowl.

No one was around to see him cry.

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Miss Selah: damn. That didn't turn out like I planned at all.


End file.
